Transmutation
 

I somehow survived what I believed was impending doom, im still here so those beliefs I was so entrenched in, they were just beliefs. I wasn't meant to survive it, so here I am in a funny situation, who I once was is no more, like my mind got a reboot, like death and rebirth. Things that used to scare me, it all seems so petty compared to the magnitude of how truly ****ed I believed I was. I thought that I had accidentally backsliding thousands of lifetimes of spiritual progress and and that the hell realms were waiting. I realised that I wasn't yet in hell and that for someone who was meant to be in hell, things weren't so bad. I started appreciating and feeling the gratitude for everything. I realised things are okay right now, better than okay, having no expectations of ever experiencing anything good again, you really see the goodness around you. When it's all said and done, love and compassion that's the light, that's all I can desire.

I don't know where I'm at now, I'm in the grip of an immense life challenge, I been going with the flow, just going with the wind any which way it's blowing and I'm free in a way I never been before. I been following my heart, even if it leads me into despair, i got this faith now, a path with heart is the right path.

I dont know what I'm doing, im at the edge of a cliff about to leap. Im putting this faith to the test, pushing past old limits. There's this Dzogchen Buddhism lama guy on YouTube who explains things really well. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is his name.

Why did you call your post / thread transmutation?

Spur of the moment thing. The alchemical transmutation of lead into gold, what it means to me is darkness into light, unconscious into conscious. Something that poisoned my mind also cleansed it, my greatest curse has become the greatest blessing. I used to label and reject my pain like it was something I needed to escape from, what I learned to do while in a state of apparent hopelessness is accept the pain with open arms and compassion, welcoming the pain with a big hug. My pain reminds me to be present, suffering is a wakeup call. Like that song when you're smiling the world smiles with you, when you smile to your pain, it smiles back.

Sorry for your pain.

It's my belief that thoughts attract and bring in our lives experiences similar to them. If you indulge in painful and other negative feelings, you unfortunately attract more pain in negativity.

Try joy, and want things that make you happy, and see what happens!

Anyway, transmutation doesn't have a connotation of changing bad into good.

"Transmutation" = "conversion"

From Ch.6 of my book Godspeak 2000 (freely downloadable here if this rings a bell):

Fortunately, the very severity of the crises those who are errant bring upon themselves and subject others around them to also serves as a catalyst for positive change in those who have as yet underutilized capacity to acknowledge and constructively relate to the truth. Whether such eventuality is welcomed or not, sooner or later, particularly after repeated or lengthy trial and tribulation, when their strength is depleted, beleaguered individuals experience a state of psychospiritual ‘bankruptcy’, in which the hope of attaining idealization-fantasy fulfillment ‘dies’, and they starkly see that even seeking to compensate themselves for such unfulfillment by means of substitute desire-gratification dooms them to endless effort, if not utter frustration and futility.

They enter a phase, poetically alluded to as ‘the dark night of the soul’, characterized initially by feelings of upset and anger, then despair, followed by sadness, depression and, ultimately, resignation, in which yearning and striving for what they desire, because satisfaction continually eludes them, finally cease. Sense of purpose is lost. What they do or don’t do then matters little to them, if at all. Life seems a cruel joke, if not meaningless. The process continues, generally in waves and spurts, till they fully accept the fact that they cannot have things be the way them want them to be (or not be the way they want them not to be). In the end, truly humbled, they reach the point where they stop being egocentrically willful and demanding, whatever their personal predilection and preference may have been or yet be.

Then, because no longer preoccupied with dreams of idealization-fantasy fulfillment and schemes aimed at attaining the same, they begin to be open to truly savoring and appreciating actualities and possibilities that are inherent in, and so embrace and act to creatively enhance, their and others present condition and circumstance, whatever this happens to be. As a result of becoming disillusioned regarding the possibility of actualizing and enjoying what, because of comparison-based sensation and logic, they previously mentally and emotionally fixated on as ‘ideal’, by default as it were, without specifically intending to, they organically rediscover and reexperience {remember what you life was like when you were 'happy' as a child? you were sometimes at least} as a the beauty and bounteousness of Life as is.

In due course, such rediscovery and reexperience sparks a conversion in one’s outlook and mode of operation. Because one then experientially knows disappointment and dissatisfaction to be idealization-associated blights, one becomes more wary of and less likely to be lured by fantasy-based temptations and, if and when one gets ‘snared’ by them, more quickly frees oneself from such entanglement by reestablishing wholesome relationship with what is in truth. Gradually, more and more often, and each time more fully, recognizing the bounteousness of experience and ongoing opportunity for discovery, development and joyful expression afforded by Life as It is to be a phenomenal boon, one proceeds with an attitude of greater and greater appreciation and consequently [i]love[/u]. As the quest for ‘more’ desire-satisfaction then becomes superfluous, one increasingly enjoys and, so, more and more ‘naturally’ acts to enhance developments in Life’s garden, whatever one’s situation and whoever one may be with. Such progression ‘naturally’ culminates in one’s actualizing totally positive modality and flourishing in complete psychospiritual communion with Life processes one is part and parcel of, as all one’s giving and receiving becomes geared to this.

In due course, such rediscovery and reexperience sparks a conversion in one’s outlook and mode of operation. Because one then experientially knows disappointment and dissatisfaction to be idealization-associated blights, one becomes more wary of and less likely to be lured by fantasy-based temptations and, if and when one gets ‘snared’ by them, more quickly frees oneself from such entanglement by reestablishing wholesome relationship with what is in truth. Gradually, more and more often, and each time more fully, recognizing the bounteousness of experience and ongoing opportunity for discovery, development and joyful expression afforded by Life as It is to be a phenomenal boon,b one proceeds with an attitude of greater and greater appreciation and consequently love. As the quest for ‘more’ desire-satisfaction then becomes superfluous, one increasingly enjoys and, so, more and more ‘naturally’ acts to enhance developments in Life’s garden, whatever one’s situation and whoever one may be with. Such progression ‘naturally’ culminates in one’s actualizing totally positive modality and flourishing in complete psychospiritual communion with Life processes one is part and parcel of, as all one’s giving and receiving becomes geared to this.

By the way, that Dzogchen Buddhism info makes so much sense.

Faith??? Or are you trying to find the courage of your beliefs? If you truly believe that we are eternal you'll jump off that cliff and learn to fly on the way down and there won't be a sickening splat at the bottom. Nut then sometimes beliefs come cheaply. If you don't jump, what are you afraid of? How free are you really?

"You have always been here."
Kosh

That's a stupid thing to suggest.

I would jump off a cliff without a worry. Im not in any hurry to die like I once was though.